Harnessing both information and knowledge visualisation to represent a community of practice: depicting the ICT4D researcher community in South Africa

Information and Communication for Development (ICT4D) research is characterised by its dynamism, interdisciplinarity, and fragmented adhocracy. This makes it difficult for stakeholders to communicate and share knowledge. Stakeholders, including academia, practitioners, government, non-government and funding agencies, could benefit from a shared conceptualization to enhance communication and increase knowledge production and impact. Visualisation is one of the oldest mechanisms for supporting human communication, and visualisation has proven efficacious in terms of enhancing knowledge creation and transfer in interdisciplinary contexts. This paper proposes using both information and knowledge visualisations to produce a visual representation of the community of Development Informatics (DI) and Information and Communication for Development (ICT4D) researchers in South Africa. Using a design science research approach, we demonstrate how the strengths of both information and knowledge visualisations can be harnessed to represent this South African research community. The theoretical value of this paper lies in the delineation of a novel approach that aligns and deploys information and knowledge visualisations at different stages of the knowledge production process. The practical contribution lies in the presentation of a visual representation of the South African ICT4D community. We acknowledge the limitations inherent in trying to represent a dynamic community but suggest this approach to act as a point of departure for critique and improvement.